


Affaire de Coeur

by maideniron



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 02:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maideniron/pseuds/maideniron
Summary: False relations are hard to deal with, but an affaire de coeur makes everything more difficult for Elizabeth and Raymond.





	Affaire de Coeur

I’m a ghost of a girl that I want to be most.  
I’m the shell of the girl that I used to know well.

The last time she slept through the night was months ago, because comas count - right? Elizabeth tosses and turns in bed, unable to fend off racing thoughts and the approaching claws of insomnia. The low thread count is something she barely notices, but after reigning in Raymond Reddington’s good graces for so long, she notices. She notices the low thread count and craves the softness, as well as a dent in her queen sized bed. She turned onto her back and felt springs bite into her shoulders, bony and malnourished - she hasn’t been eating, but she hasn’t been doing much of anything anymore.  
Tom used to sleep to the left of her. He called it a safe zone from her wild unconscious limbs, and on their wedding night (their first - the fake one) he was so discreet that he barely called her out on it. So nice, so...deceiving. She should have known from the start that if he could lie about her tossing and turning, that he could lie about anything else. Her snoring, her sweating; all of it, he lied, he lied, he lied.  
But, she loved - and she loved him hard.  
He was her last cling of normalcy. Her last cling of her old life, of Elizabeth Keen. She might as well have been dead. FBI agent Elizabeth Keen was done and finished with, and in seclusion that idea was all the more dominant. New York...that wasn’t a life for her. There was nothing there for her.  
(Agnes, Dembe, Reddington.)  
There was a little girl with a blunt bob-do, a little girl who should have had a mother who was normal. A mother that knew what she was doing - a mother that wanted her. Elizabeth dug her fingernails into her palm at that thought, eyes glazed out front; she did want her, that hasn’t changed. How could she not want her? Agnes was an angel, and in the time that she’s been with her, recently, she’s just that. An angel.  
An angel that has no idea what her father was like.  
She calls Reddington daddy, a mistake that Elizabeth takes with a grain of salt and a grain of sugar. She knows her grandfather, that’s a good thing, and she knows her grandmother. She’s staying with her now, and that habit of that word (that word, that word, that word) will wear off in time.  
Seclusion, that’s all that she has.  
Seclusion and heartbreak.  
The sweat of tossing and turning glistened like sheen, and when Elizabeth stood from the bed she almost toppled over. Kate was there, wagging her tail and panting like steaks were raining down from the sky.  
“Good girl.” Elizabeth said, scratching through the short hair behind Kate’s ears. “Come on,” she clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth, “you hungry? Food?”  
The dog whimpered in return, her tail wagging more viciously as she followed Elizabeth out into the cabin kitchen.  
-  
I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be, right in front of me.  
Talk some sense to me.

In ten months he taught her how to walk.  
In ten months she began to look at him with the same warmth Elizabeth had and a mouth with the fondest smile imaginable.  
Raymond should see Tom in her, but he knows better than to cast her out because of his careless and decrepitness. She’s innocence embodied, Agnes, and she looks so much like Elizabeth. She’s gone. Her mother entrusted Susan Hargrave with her protection, which is foolish considering that he’s still monitoring her safety. From afar, he tells Dembe as they watch Agnes at a nearby park. She likes Cheerios and Thomas the Train, and both she has in her hands as she stomps down the slide.  
“A rebel,” Raymond remarks with the tilt of his hat.  
Dembe waits for a moment, and then replies. “Raymond, we’re too close. Susan will see.” His shoulders square, in true South Sudan fashion. Like the freedom fighter he was, he wasn’t biased.  
Except for when he was.  
“Raymond.” He repeats, and Raymond raises a hand in response.  
“Five more minutes.” He bargains.  
“Two.” Dembe says.  
Raymond ignores him and settles for watching Agnes with a trained eye. She’s careless in her pristine pink outfit. If Susan knew anything (like Raymond has for the past ten months) about her, Agnes, she’d know that her favorite color was blue. Royal blue, to be exact. If he could take her anywhere, boy, he would take her to Greece. Egremnoi, where the water was as blue as the sand was tan. And, she didn’t like dresses. They got in the way of her playing, and Agnes loved to play.  
His flat back in New York was proof of that, there were train tracks galore.  
“Thirty seconds.” Dembe reminds him, which causes Raymond to - not roll his eyes, though he wanted to - savor the last thirty seconds. There’s a bodyguard, no - three, on standby. If Raymond gives Scottie credit for anything, it’s her thoroughness.  
He extends his arm and pulls himself off of the bench, just in time to turn around and send Dembe a curt nod.  
Raymond returns back to his empty flat with trains, train tracks galore and royal blue toddler jumpers.

**Author's Note:**

> A little snippet based off of tonight's episode! I hope you enjoy!


End file.
